Two soldiers with the US-led international military coalition and three Afghan men have been killed during attacks in southern Afghanistan, local and Nato officials have said.

Five Afghan police and three Nato service members including one Briton have died in separate roadside bomb blasts, officials said today.

Five Afghan police officers have been killed by a roadside bomb in the southern province of Kandahar today.

Police set up road blocks today around the southern Afghan city of Kandahar searching for accomplices of a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber who killed 20 people in one of the worst terror attacks in Afghanistan since the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, officials said.

US troops killed five suspected Taliban fighters and detained five more, including two commanders, after an ambush on their patrol in southern Afghanistan.